Research by a US web-monitoring firm has confirmed what anecdotal evidence already suggested – the UK’s subscription-free internet service providers are more unstable than their paid-for counterparts. According to the survey, one in ten evening dial-up attempts fail.
Inverse Network Technology Inc tested 19 ISPs over two weeks in March. Nine criteria were used, including accessibility in business hours, the evening, and an average over 24 hours. Of the four free ISPs in the survey, primarily aimed at consumers who dial up in the evening, only one, BT ClickFree, had better than average success rates, scoring an ‘A’. Dixons Freeserve, LineOne and Virgin Net all scored less than ‘B’ indicating worse than average performance.
Virgin redeemed itself during the business-hour category, scoring well enough to drag its 24-hour average into a respectable ‘A’. Similarly, LineOne’s performance during the day helped it achieve a ‘B’ grade overall. But Freeserve, the largest ISP in the country with close to 1.5 million subscribers, failed to make an impact.
Peter Dove, European MD of Inverse, said the rapid uptake of free ISP services has outpaced the ability of the ISPs to cope with network demand. This has led to a 50% increase in the average number of failed dialups since January.
